Story: Frank Tieri
Art: Oleg Okunev
Publisher: Aftershock Comics
What if the black plague wasn’t what the history books would like us to think it was? What if it was a cover up for something more sinister? This is what Pestilence from Aftershock comics tries to explore.
The years is 1347 and the group Fiat Lux is called by the church to deal with a renegade band of crusaders. Once they have dealt with the nasty business, they come in contact with a courier. A courier who seems to be ill and ends up biting one of them. After putting the man down, with great difficulty, they find a note addressed to Roderick Helms, the de facto leader of Fiat Lux. It’s a summons from the Vatican, to deal with a far greater problem than wayward crusaders.
Pestilence #1 is beautifully told through Roderick Helms himself. Through a confessional letter he has sent to is wife, he details the events from a few weeks prior. His band of warriors consists of the regular eclectic group; the joker, the brute, the clever one, the killer and the quiet one. It a standard troupe and at first glance a straight adventure narrative. The characters are familiar and it is expected that as the story continues that there will be more familiar tropes. There has definitely been an influx of zombie stories over the past years, and in order for these to become competitive the writers have to be inventive. It can be immersing zombies in literary fiction as in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, set it in history like Exit Humanity or the middle ages like Pestilence. Max Brooks hinted in his Zombie Survival Guide, that the world was no stranger to zombie attacks, and that most of them had been hidden under the guise of other plagues, and what could be more wide spread than the Black Death. It’s an interesting concept and it makes for an intriguing plot.
All in all Pestilence #1 hints at a delightful and exiting tale, with fun artwork, all the things that Aftershock Comics has proven to be experts at. They just keep on bringing awesome comics with great art, brilliant!
